We are very excited to introduce David Mancera, our new business advisor. David brings a wealth of work and life experience that makes him an ideal fit to support our sustainable small farm clients. The sum of his experience growing up in a farmworker family in the Salinas Valley, working in produce companies like Driscoll's, consulting to small businesses, and teaching sustainable agriculture classes at Hartnell College give him an unparalleled breadth of knowledge and perspective to help our clients take the next step in their business.

Ironically, as a teenager David knew just one thing about his future career: He didn’t want to work in agriculture. Having helped his parents work in the fields on the weekends and after school, he knew just how hard farming was and vowed to do something—anything—else with his life. However, his soccer coach persuaded him to enroll in an outreach program from Cal Poly that presented high school students with information about career paths in agricultural science, technology, and business. David began to see the potential of working within agriculture, and he embarked on a career that has encompassed sales, recruitment, marketing, HR, financial accounting, and most recently business advising for small, sustainable farms in the Salinas Valley.

The more I work in agriculture, the more I enjoy it, and the more opportunities I see to improve the system.

— David

He looks forward to meeting more growers through Kitchen Table Advisors, learning how they operate, and offering suggestions for how to add value to their operations and increase their economic sustainability. David sees his work with farmers as a kind of cross-pollination that can allow effective financial strategies to spread among sustainable growers.

David comes on board as part of Kitchen Table Advisors’ formal program launch this fall, which will see us expand our client portfolio and increase our impact threefold. His work will begin with envisioning the future of our business advising program and selecting a new group of clients for the coming years. Starting in November, he will focus on one-on-one business advising sessions with our client farmers. Welcome, David!